Mural 7: Passing Through Customs

Artists’ statement

The Woolloomooloo waterfront was home to diverse communities of sailors and immigrant workers from non-Anglo-Irish backgrounds. By the turn of the 20th century this area included a growing fishing community, mostly of Maltese and Italian origin. Many single men from Italy and Malta also worked as stevedores, painters and dockers and lived in boarding houses close to the waterfront.

A community of Italian immigrants settled in Darlinghurst after Giuliano Rizzo established Sydney’s first pasta factory in 1903 at 73 Stanley Street. In 1916 Rizzo supplied free pasta to a shipload of Maltese refugees stranded in the harbour at Woolloomooloo after the government refused their landing. Later, with chain migration, many brought their families and moved on to other areas.

A fish market was set up at Forbes Street, Woolloomooloo in 1872. It was upgraded in 1893, before moving in 1914 to the Sydney Municipal Markets at Haymarket.

After Sydney was hit by bubonic plague in 1901 – the source of which was the rat-infested waterfront – the wharves came under the control of the new Sydney Harbour Trust (later the Maritime Services Board) which began a massive rebuilding program. From 1910 to 1914 the old semi-circular wharf was demolished and the Finger Wharf, able to take deep sea vessels and ocean liners, was built to a design by engineer Henry Walsh. Walsh Bay is named after him.

The wharves at Woolloomooloo Bay played a significant role in Sydney’s history, not only for import and exports but as embarkation points for troops leaving for the Boer War and World Wars 1 and 2. They were also arrival points for returned servicemen and migrants after World War 2.

In 1956, Shed No. 7 of the Finger Wharf was altered and upgraded as the Woolloomooloo Passenger Terminal.

Sicilians, Calabrians and people from the Aeolian islands made up a significant part of the fishing community in Woolloomooloo. Fishing boats were tied in deep water moorings at Browns Wharf, next to the Finger Wharf. Relatively small, the boats worked inside and just outside the Sydney Heads. When not drying nets in the sun, in bad weather fishermen were seen mending their nets or playing cards at the wharf.

Before moving to Pyrmont and Leichhardt, the annual Blessing of the Fleet was celebrated in Woolloomooloo as the Feast of St Rocco. Traditionally, celebrations involved a Mass followed by a procession through the streets to Browns Wharf where a sermon in English and Italian would be given, and the fishing fleet would be blessed with incense and holy water.

The boats would then be crowded with passengers and sailed around the bay decorated with streamers and balloons. When crucial areas of the suburb were demolished for the construction of the eastern suburbs railway and the eastern distributor roadway, the fishing industry began to move away from Woolloomooloo.

In Woolloomooloo in the 19980s there were still some elderly Italian men who had worked the trawlers in the heyday of the bay’s fishing industry. They were living in boarding houses and patronising the Atlanta and Garibaldi clubs.